Autonerdz forums

The last place I worked only had "Shopkey" (Mitchell) when I arrived. That information system was causing my production to suffer. I thought it was just me having trouble navigating it due to this SI system being new to me. In the evenings I would keep practicing with it to sharpen my skills in the navigation. The more I used it, the more frustrated I become. Finally I went to the SM and asked if it would be possible to obtain a subscription to Alldata. The SM denied the request due to a contract he had for his combined shop management/service information software. Fair enough, I'll keep trying to use it. After a couple of weeks I went to the owner and requested Alldata and explained why. He understood and it was granted. Awesome!.... I'm back in business now.

Many times I would help other techs in the shop with what they were working on. They would ask me questions for that silver bullet. I'd ask what the service manual says about it first. The response was either they couldn't find it or didn't bother to look. Sometimes I'd see them at the computer for along time searching for something in Shopkey. After going to Alldata, I'd have everything they needed and printed within seconds.

The crazy thing about all of this is though, those same techs would keep going back to "Shopkey" experiencing the same frustrations over and over after showing them how fast and easy it was in "Alldata." Oh well...

To be fair to Shopkey/Mitchell On Demand though, there have been times when their wiring diagrams have helped although rarely needing to use them. After I would print one out, I'd have to use a magnifying glass to view it. You have to be very careful using these. Many times I've seen mistakes in them when I did use it.

My first taste of MOD was at the Puyallup Fairgrounds trade-show where you had a booth. (Wasn't that the same place where you riding a scooter that had a 50 lb. weight limit?) I'm not sure what year that was... '03 maybe? Anyway, it was horrible then and the rep was even embarrassed. Same holds true today.

I agree, Alldata is the way to go if not using the OEM websites.

     

I agree AD is a good system but they are looking down on people using notebooks for accessing there info system and being tied to one physical location.  This really kind of pisses me off.

I am curious how this is going to pan out with the new mobile scanners  Pegisys and Verus tools.

Sam

They don't want to lose control of you and what you do with what they figure is their information even after they sell it to you. 
I'm sure their data is accessed from ip's that don't belong to anyone who has purchased their information online. I know around here seemed like about every other mechanic you talked to was using one dealer ships account.  That dealer recently went out of business and closed the AD account makes me wonder if any other shops around here have info anymore.  I even think there are legitimate reasons for that to happen.
Say a tech has a tough problem going on at work so he moves on to some other jobs after doing some preliminary data gathering all in the interest of feeding the family. Goes home at night and logs in to ad on his home computer to do some research on the problem and form a plan for diagnosis in the morning.
  Ad doesn't want that happening cause it screws up their ip data base and they can't tell for sure who's legit and who's not.
    Used to be we had printed material it was a better deal if you ask me. You could pay as you need the info. Get your self updated every year or two. If I spent a  grand  every couple years it kept me up. Now it's all or nothing.  Granted there is more to keep up with in the time since I used to buy books. If you want to buy alldata you can but you have to enter into that agreement in the beginning then pay for two years and you have two year old information. Want to update buy all the same info allover again plus the two years you missed and pay two more years  although the rate might be higher now than it was two years earlier.
    I think we'll see both systems want to eliminate the dvds and go to online only. That will give them much more control than they currently have over who has and who hasn't got their info. In truth the dvds are much faster for me once they're on the hard drive.
   I'd agree that alldata is the better of the two widely available systems but I'm not going to brag them up anywhere lest they start thinking I'm real happy with what they do.

literally place two checks and your home computers ready, its not three computers can access, its 3 computers at a time,                                                          things i've noticed,the factory data is sometimes wrong,more common ford,   like it will tell you how to replace distributor or the spark plug gap on a ford idi diesel(ha).........says chevy durmaxs have a fuel pump in tank,which it doesn't,....gives time and diagrams for replacing fuel pump relay on ford 5.4L engines with fuel pump modulator(those relays are soldered to a board,......wiring colors are sometimes wrong,  on older vehicles they only have half the information( i've seen the factory manuals), somebody on the iatn called it SOMEDATA, this is true in alot of areas but it is the best information other than the factory sites, i think alot of it maybe oems not having correct information in book and alldata not updating,         all in all i'm happy and besides i pirate it from work, its free

I think all the ALLDATA I have seen is O.E.M.  Chilton's is also OEM.

Hi Randy,

you said "I got my 1984 Brat Subaru running again. Thanks to ALLDATA and Tom Roberts for telling me about. "

Sincerely would like to hear the rest of the SUBARU story .

Thanks Randy,
That gives me/us an idea what you were dealing with.

out of curiosity, how are their all wheel drive power trains holding out in general ? I have no experience with them so far.